A Four-Person Home For the Men On The Moon
February 6, 2013
A Four-Person Home for the Men on the Moon

As if the existence of 3D printing techniques wasnt space-agey enough, London architectural firm Foster + Partners is collaborating with the European Space Agency to print buildings on the moon. After starting the process of building the worlds first 3D-printed house, developers have decided to expand to a neighborhood 384,000 kilometers away.

The proposed lunar structure will require some set-up out of the box: a pre-constructed modular tube entryway and an inflatable, pressurized dome to protect human inhabitants from radiation and micrometeoroids will form the foundation of the building. A robot-operated D-shape printerwill then require little more than readily available lunar soil, or regolith, to manufacture the entire four-person structure over top. Using additive manufacturing techniques, the soil will be combined with magnesium oxide and a binding salt to create printable material that can withstand significant weight.

There are still kinks in the master plan to work out: extremes in lunar temperature may have undetermined effects on the printing technology, which works best at (earthly) room temperature, and lunar dust is hazardous to human lungs. Nevertheless, a preliminary test utilizing a close approximation of lunar soil -- sourced from a single Italian volcano -- resulted in a 1.5-ton building block.